


viv says: febuwhump time

by ephemeraldark



Category: Asagao Academy: Normal Boots Club, PBG Hardcore
Genre: Animal Death, Body Horror, Character Death, Gen, Multiple Settings, i guess?, tags to be updated lul, unnecessary violence against chickens, zombie aids make their return
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:01:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22519663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephemeraldark/pseuds/ephemeraldark
Summary: :)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 6





	1. pt. 1 -- lost

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for hawky for sending these prompts into the discord server!!! i've never tried to do a prompt a day kind of thing but im excited to see how this will go, heehee...some of the prompts i definitely will struggle with but im excited nonetheless!!
> 
> as always, here's the disclaimer: nothing in here is meant to be affiliated with any real-life people. especially considering some of the topics discussed and directions i've planned on taking some prompts!!! orz
> 
> anyways, happy whump month!!

He was lost by the time he realized he couldn’t hear the group anymore.

He’d only been looking for chickens, he swore on his life: but if there was anything he had a penchant for it was wandering off and getting absolutely, miserably  _ lost _ .

That was fine, Austin figured. He’d made a 180-degree turn and walk right back the way he came until he saw the torched-up beacon they’d slapped on top of their shitty wooden excuse for a house, or really any other familiar landmark. The misshapen hole where a creeper had exploded the other night, maybe, or those weird little cobblestone T’s Jeff would make to fight endermen against.

None of those landmarks he was looking for ever showed up.That was fine, too. He hadn’t gotten fatally lost in a long, long time, after all. Even if the members of the group liked to poke fun at him and got rather irritated when he wandered off as always, he’d be fine.

Actually, which direction was he supposed to be going again? He’d been walking towards the sun in the morning, watching it slowly rise over the thick treetops in the horizon. So, to get home, he’d need to walk towards...the sunset? West? He could make a compass with the limited resources he had on him, but he doubted it would help. He had no idea how to get from where they’d first woken up to where they’d built their little house, somewhere at the mouth of a cerulean river and the feet of rolling, lime-colored hills. It was a peaceful area, but the uneven ground made it hard to see very far in any direction, and left the group turned around more than once.

Still unwilling to fully accept that he was probably screwed, Austin looked back to the sky, trying to angle the blinding sun relative to the horizon and trace his steps back. The grassy terrain didn’t offer any way for him to track his footprints back, like sand or snow would. 

Shit. 

He was in big trouble, wasn’t he?

He couldn’t help but laugh at his own misfortune, making his way over to one of the strangely blocky birch trees that lined the edge of the forest to sit agains. It occurred to him that he’d have to weather out the night here, try to make a little shelter or anything to keep him safe from the typical terrors that came with night. He’d certainly gotten arrogant with fate, knowing just how easy it was to get lost in this world and still  _ choosing  _ to wander off. 

He sighed, trying to get a look in between the trees. There weren’t any caves or sizeable pits that he could make into a makeshift shelter. Maybe he really should have picked up on Jeff’s habit of making every single tool, so that he wouldn’t have to break down a tree with an old stone pickaxe that had  _ definitely  _ seen better days. 

He managed to break down a grand total of  _ one and a half whole trees  _ before the pick snapped clean off, managing to slam right down onto his foot, and leaving him with a useless and bent handle with a little bit of stone stuck to one end. 

Jumping his weight off of the unhappy foot, Austin tossed the broken tool somewhere into the forest ahead of him. He definitely didn’t have enough materials with him to make a safe shelter, so he’d have to dig a little hole in the ground and make a roof above it. Hopefully, no flaming monsters would set the wooden planks ablaze come morning. Assuming he made it that far. 

Once the little hole had been dug, he carefully placed the wooden planks above his head. He had left one of his few spare torches outside, in case anyone had been sent out to look for him. Doubtful that they’d risk their lives to that degree for  _ him _ , but still, he had to hold onto what little filaments of hope still reached him if he wanted to stay sane, let alone alive. 

By the time he had secured himself underground, the sun had fallen past the horizon, lost to the night. He set a torch down in the middle of his little dirt hideaway, careful not to burn himself on the sparks that flew off. Ideally, he’d try to curl up and fall asleep, but there was no room for ideals in their cruel world. Not long after he’d locked himself up, he heard the unmistakable sound of zombies, their sickening groans tracking back and forth above ground. He wondered if they could sense him—he’d seen zombies suddenly turn around and  _ charge  _ at unsuspecting victims. 

Not long after, he hear the telltale clacking of bones announcing the arrival of skeletons. If zombies were annoying, skeletons were a nightmare. Especially without a shield, he knew that a pack of skeletons would take him down in only a few shots. They’d gotten smarter too, than the blocky, white idiots he’d initially met—they used trees to their advantage, hid inside tall grass and shot out their lethal arrows from behind trees. 

Then there were the creepers. Oh god, the creepers. Austin’s mind began to race along with his heart as he heard the faint hiss of a creeper falling. Unwanted,  _ unwarranted _ memories barraged him immediately, horrible memories of going from existing to nothing but a pile of indistinguishable matter splattered like an egg dropped on the ground in the blink of an eye. They had cursed him, he swore, ever since he’d seen those goddamned pink sheep so long ago. They always seemed to be there when he least expected it. 

God, there was one right above him, he could hear it’s faint breathing noises—soft hisses that reminded him of the pure destructive power they harbored. He curled his hands helplessly into the dirt under him, trying to ignore the noise. He really shouldn’t have gotten lost. If he’d just stayed within eyesight of everyone else, he would be safe in bed right now, likely dozing off alongside his friends. 

But no, he was curled up in a three foot deep hole in the ground, feeling his sanity drop like a weight as he listened to some  _ creepers that couldn’t even hurt him,  _ because he had gone and gotten himself lost. As he always did. He was kind of like a faulty machine in a way, something that couldn’t be rid of its fatal flaw no matter how hard the programmers worked on it.

Another soft hiss from the creepers, and dirt walls felt like they were closing in on him. He sealed heavily, closing his eyes and trying to count his breaths—in for seven, hold for four, out for eight. In for seven, hold for four, out—

It was most certainly not working. 

Maybe he was meant to be lost. Maybe that was what was best for the group, in the end. They wouldn’t have to babysit him and keep a constant eye on him, and he would be able to save Jeff the inevitable heartbreak by dying  _ far away  _ from him this time, instead of exploding in his best friend’s face for the millionth time. It was always better to throw out blueprints and restart when a plan failed so abysmally, right?

He was almost certain that he was better off lost than found. Even as panic crawled over him like little sparks, faulting his circuitry and taking over his body like a virus, he was certain that it would be better if he wasn’t found this time around. The creepers above him hissed louder, almost as if they were communicating in a cruel mockery of his fears. 

Austin sighed, a heavy shudder passing down his spine. It must have been getting into the darkest parts of the night, as he began to hear the faint coos of enderman as the wandered around aimlessly. They seemed permanently lost—just like him, he mused, half entertained by the poetic nature of that thought. Maybe that was why they became so aggravated when they met the eyes of a human—they were reminded of a society, a companionship that they were never able to create amongst themselves. 

As the dark night droned on above, his internal clock fell into disarray. Any thoughts or sounds from outside were drowned out by the dull static inside his head, slowly crescendoing to a deafening buzz..and suddenly, a large crash. 

It seemed that a creeper had been shot by a skeleton, and detonated immediately, shattering Austin’s small sanctum. The brunt of the explosion was mostly taken by the dirt and wooden planks around him, but it left him absolutely trapped and in the dark as it blew out all of his light. He remained still for a moment, trying to assess the situation before he came to a painful realization—he was completely exposed to the monsters around him. He had no  _ choice _ but to say a few choice prayers and take off in a random direction. 

  
  


* * *

It had been four days, give or take, since he’d gotten lost. 

That was fine, Austin figured, he estimated he could make it a week in the wild without dying. The days had begun to run together in a haze of radio silence and rusting joints as he dragged on in every direction, crossing back and forth until he stumbled across something that he knew only meant bad news. A desert. 

He’d been lost before in a desert, and died there. That was fine, too. He was stronger than before, or at least he would have been had he still had food, had his sword not broken two days ago while fending off zombies. 

Something about the vast, pale expanse of the desert slapped him with reality. Just like that desert extended infinitely, so did his wandering, only to be cut off when the world decided that it was time. He blinked, shielding his eyes against the blazing sun. He was lost, hopelessly lost, and no one was ever going to find him out here. He hadn’t eaten in two days. He had no way to defend himself. There was no logical way that he was going to save himself.

That same feeling from the first night he had wandered away filled him tenfold. No one would find him. He wouldn't be able to hear their voices or see their faces again, not until they all died painful and brutal deaths that they were all undeserving of. If they were all lost souls roaming through some purgatorian hellscape, at least the team had the camaraderie of numbers. 

But not Austin. 

Perhaps it was a trick of the blazing sun, but the sand before him began to swim. Back and forth, a slow shift up and down, rocking side to side. Only when he felt the gritty grains under his palms did he realize that the rocking was from  _ himself _ , not the ground around him. With the little bit of coordination he still had, he managed to roll himself into a sitting position, which quickly devolved into lying flat on his back, staring at the cloudless sky with a hazy gaze.

He’d much prefer to die with dignity, going out in a fight rather than wasting away in the middle of a desert. But, unfortunately, in their world, there was little choice in when or where you would go out—even if it was almost guaranteed to happen, time and time again. He barely registered that he couldn’t feel his hands anymore, as if he would be witness to the unfortunate shutdown of his systems. No sentient machine wanted to die, but they had no choice when their battery became completely exhausted. As it, as he whirred on into his final moments, lost entirely from civilization, the world began to short-circuit. Little stars of white filled his unfocused vision, slowly crowding together until they made up all that he saw. The light at the end of the tunnel, as joked about, he supposed.

He really shouldn’t have gotten himself lost.

_ >Peeebs starved to death.  _


	2. pt. 2 -- fever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> basic human biology: if the temperature goes up, the body breaks down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I DID SO MUCH RESEARCH FOR THIS and i am sorry (not really) for the amount of medical shmush that i shoved into this....human biology cool k thx  
> anyways now google keeps giving me naturopathy ads help. karen i don't want your essential oils i just needed to know about tannins in oak trees.  
> this is based off of that one part in hc7, i was really sad that barry died there but i guess, after writing this, getting smacked by zombies would be the preferable option....

The zombie invasion was one of the worst things that any of the group had seen in a long time. So early on in their quest, too. Jeff and Ray had managed to escape, relatively unscathed, but Barry had taken the brunt of the battle. In all honesty, it was a wonder that he hadn’t died. Perhaps a testament to his calm, collected nature, but he had seen almost unfazed when he emerged from the mines, covered in blood and zombie bits. The vague haze in his eyes was hidden by his usual sunglasses, and so no one would have been any the wiser that he was more than just a little out of it. 

Even in his own mind, it was easy enough to brush off any strange symptoms as sheer exhaustion and the sudden crash that followed adrenaline fleeing his bloodstream. If he hadn’t been so tired, Barry probably would have been  _ impressed  _ with the fact that he hadn’t died. He’d been so sure that it was going to happen, and yet somehow, he was still up and running.

After packing the mine entrance closed with what felt like a metric ton of dirt, sand, and rocks, the excitement quickly fizzled out among the rest of the group. If it weren’t for Jeff and Ray’s insistence that he should probably clean out some of the nastier-looking bites (seriously, the zombies seemed to be fucking  _ cannibalistic _ ) on his arms and the back of his neck in the nearby river, he probably would immediately gone to sleep off the daytime-nightmare. Daymare? Daymare.

So when he woke up in the middle of the night with his heart pounding a mile a minute, along with an unbearable headache and being unable to see anything at all, he didn’t immediately think that it would be anything zombie-sourced. He waved his hand in front of his face, unable to see even the slightest of motions in front of him. He was acutely aware of just how bad every square centimeter of his body  _ ached.  _ He might have been lucky to be alive, but that feat didn’t come freely. 

He sat up, dragging his hands down over his face and trying to ignore the base sense of  _ wrongness  _ that sat deep inside his stomach, the kind of feeling you get when you know that something bad is about to happen. What was more was that he couldn’t ignore how warm his forehead felt as his hands dragged against it. He wasn’t uncomfortable, not really, but his skin felt warm and clammy to the touch. 

Some kind of sickness, perhaps? But everyone had assumed it was impossible to get sick in this universe. Sure, sometimes going through a field of flowers made people sneeze, and sniffling after weeks in the snow or falling into cold water weren’t unheard of, but as far as he was aware, no one had gotten  _ seriously sick  _ out here. 

A couple of concerning possibilities flashed through his mind as he laid back down. If he was sick, he’d probably need to sleep it off; there wasn’t going to be a CVS Pharmacy located in the nearest mineshaft. The most logical conclusion was some sort of infection from sticking open wounds into a river: and who knows what could have been in there. Parasites? Bacteria not known to earthly creatures? A literal alien virus?

The second, and more concerning option was something he’d only heard mentioned in passing—a disease that didn’t seem to occur in  _ this world,  _ but in one very similar to the one he had grown something accustomed to. There didn’t seem to be a name for it, but he’d heard McJones bitterly refer to it as ‘Zombie AIDS’. It sounded nasty, slowly wearing away at your health until you were too weak to even walk, then killing you as your organs shut down from the zombie toxins. Then, the worst part: you’d become a zombie yourself, and your friends would be forced to kill your rotting body to live. 

Not the fate he wanted. Not a fate  _ anyone  _ wanted. 

Slowly, his vision began to return. Everything was tinted a strange, reddish hue, as if there was blood under his corneas. He tried not to think too hard about why his vision was so disturbed: the sudden constriction of blood vessels that accompanied the start of a fever cutting off blood flow, the swelling of a brain during a headache pressing on the optic nerves and cutting out all vision entirely. 

Suddenly, the connection between a high fever and the forbidden  _ Zombie AIDS  _ clicked in his mind. It was basic human biology, basic  _ anything  _ biology: if the internal temperature gets too hot, proteins begin to denature—that is, unravel. The body breaks down from the inside out. That would certainly make you feel pretty weak. And with no relief for the fever or cure for the disease causing it, death would simply be an inevitability. 

With those concerning thoughts floating around, he found it suspiciously hard to fall back asleep. Soon enough, the moon was beginning to set, the little crescent visible through the single square of glass on the opposite wall. It wouldn’t be much longer until the rest of the group began to wake up, and he’d go back to acting as if he felt normal—a bit tired at the worst. Sure enough, it only took a few more minutes for the first of a few half-awake members of the team to wake up, shuffling around their little shack as they tried to get themselves ready for another day. Barry debated on joining them for a few minutes before getting himself up as well, saying a tired  _ good morning  _ to Jeff and McJones as they talked about something.

“Good morning,” Jeff offered a weary smile. He looked guilty, and it went without saying that he blamed himself for the mess that happened yesterday—he was the one who had opened up the cave, after all. “How are you feeling? You look...well. You kinda look awful, dude,” he laughed nervously, pressing two fingers to Barry’s forehead and grimacing. “Are you sick? Can we even get sick out here?”

Something about the word  _ sick _ seemed to trigger a reaction in McJones, who looked up and over at Jeff almost immediately, mouthing something. Jeff raised an eyebrow before he went seemed to process the suggestion and went noticeably pale, shaking his head in denial.

“Let me see your arm.” The wary look on McJones’s face did a number on Barry’s own self-assurance that he wasn’t completely screwed. He was one of the more stoic members of the group, after all, so to see him looking visibly shaken was never a good thing. Barry held out his arm, rolling up his sleeve only to be visibly shaken by the state of his  _ own  _ arm. It hadn’t really stopped hurting, but he had no idea just how bad the damage was. The wounds weren’t just deep, they were jagged, leaving bloody layers of shredded sinew and muscle torn like tissue paper. Curling his fingers into a fist, he could see the movement of his own muscles at the bottom of the wound. The wound itself was lined with irritated, red-purple skin, disturbingly close to black in some areas. It was still bleeding, too, albeit much slower than it had been last night.

“Are there any oak trees around?” McJones asked suddenly, keeping most of Barry’s arm out of his line of sight even as he held it up by the wrist. 

“I haven’t seen any, but I’m sure we can  _ find  _ some. Why?” Jeff looked over from where he’d begun rummaging through one of the half-filled chests, as if he was going to find a miracle cure for zombie bites in one of them.

“Tannins.” McJones said, and then rolled his eyes when the other two looked at him as if he’d grown a second head. “It’s a compound in oak wood. It’s supposed to help blood clotting, which might help close  _ this _ up—sorry.” He gestured with his hand, before quickly realizing that he was still holding a very injured arm very tightly in his grip. He let go, and Barry took his arm back, looking it over while bordering the line between curiosity and disgust. He noted that there were purple spots on his wrist where McJones had been holding it—had his grip really been that tight? He didn’t think so.

“I’ll go look for some,” Jeff offered, standing back up with their lone iron sword in his hands. “Can I take this with?”

“I’ll go with,” Barry quickly interjected, pulling his sleeve back down to hide the disgusting, fleshy mess that was his forearm.

“You can’t go out like  _ that! _ ” Jeff seemed almost horrified by the proposition.

“I’m fine. It’s just a fever.” Barry reasoned. Jeff looked at him and shook his head no, but Barry spoke again before Jeff could object “I’m fine, seriously. This is for me, anyways.” Jeff didn’t look sold, but he didn’t seem to have the will to argue this. Perhaps he sensed the urgency of time in this mission, that they had to find some oak trees sooner rather than later.

* * *

  
  


Even though the sun had only been at the horizon when they set out, it was overhead when they finally found an oak forest after hours of wandering through spruce trees. After a collective sigh of  _ thank the heavens,  _ they got to work, quickly moving to cut down the trees. They’d have to be pretty quick if they wanted to make it back to the house before night.

Although he wouldn’t admit it, Barry’s world had been spinning and wavering for the past hour or so, the strange reddish haze coming back to haunt him. It felt like the ground was moving ever so slightly, only made worse by the increasing pain in his head and his arm. His hand felt strangely numb, almost disconnected from his body: he could still move it, but it didn’t quite feel like it belonged to his body anymore. Then, he came to a concerning realization: the forest smelled like blood.

“Do you smell that? Smells like blood.” He mused, leaning back from the tree he stood in front of to look for Jeff. It was quite possible that there were wolves in the forest and that they’d just killed some sheep, but the potency of the smell was concerning nonetheless.

“Blood? I don’t think— _ You’re bleeding.”  _ He said the last two words with absolute terror, dropping his axe and hurrying over. Barry put his hand up to his nose, shocked by the amount of blood on his palm when he pulled it away only a second or two later. It dripped down between his fingers to the grass below, and they both stared at it for a moment.

“Your eye is bleeding too. Well, it looks bloody. Let’s just get out of here, this isn’t a good idea anymore.” Jeff shuddered, definitely not enjoying the visual of a bloody eyeball. Barry didn’t blame him—the concept itself was enough to make him feel unsettled. He nodded, almost solemnly before packing up the wood he’d grabbed and following Jeff, back towards the miles of spruce that greeted them. He blinked, trying to clear the redness from his vision. It was the left eye, he could determine that much from closing one and and looking with the other. If he kept his right eye closed, his vision seemed to swim with red, filling up from the bottom and slowly rising until he blinked once more. He’d given up on trying to control the blood from his nose  _ and  _ his eye, following Jeff’s quick pace until he suddenly couldn’t.

Was he having a heart attack now, too?

“Jeff, stop—” he managed, throwing a hand out onto a tree trunk to keep himself upright. His heart was racing, the world under him was spinning so fast that he was sure he would fall over, and then it suddenly wasn’t. And then it was, again. Rinse and repeat. His heart rate felt irregular, dizzying him with it sudden races and drops in speed. He cleared his throat, trying to speak, only to feel blood in his mouth, too. Definitely not a good sign.

“Dude, you’re turning  _ green, _ ” Jeff said. Admittedly, not useful input, but Barry would be lying if he said he didn’t feel incredibly nauseous from all of the dizziness whirling around his head. “We need to get back. Can you walk?” Jeff shot a nervous glance up between the leaves of the tall trees surrounding them. The sun was sinking, the sky slowly turning hues of gold and salmon that made Barry’s vision unbearably red. He nodded, although it didn’t feel like the truth: every single footstep hurt, his legs burning more than they normally would even after a day of walking so much.

By the time they got back to the (now slightly expanded) cabin, Barry was ready to collapse. He sat down with his back to one of the walls, trying and failing to catch his breath. Every square inch of him was on fire from a combination of pain and heat, and he vaguely wondered if this was what dying of the plague felt like. It was like his own body was ripping itself apart from the inside out: he wasn’t ignorant to the bruises that had been slowly appearing around his joints as the day progressed, the uncomfortably stiffness that filled him each time he tried to move.

On top of that, the taste of blood in his mouth had (alarmingly) become a constant. As Barry stood, or rather tried to stand, the horrible feeling that he was about to simultaneously pass out, throw up, and have an aneurysm returned. He remained up for a few seconds before shaking his head gingerly, sitting back down as quickly as he had risen. It was hard to breathe, between the layers of pain, tightness in his chest, and the blood pooling in the back of his throat.

He coughed, trying desperately to catch his breath and shit—blood, of course. He smeared it over with his foot, trying to rub it into the uneven surface of the cobblestone flooring to cover it up. The irregular thump of his heart had begun to vary more and more, as if the muscle was straining to do his job. Jeff came over, dark shadows under his eyes, and sat down next to Barry. He noticed the spot on the floor that Barry had covered with his foot and chose not to speak on it, wordlessly rolling the other’s sleeve up and sucking in a sharp breath at the state of his arm.

Dark lines of bruises had begun to snake up his arm, highlighting veins and arteries in a deep purple color. He was bleeding again, too, more than he had been in the morning, and his blood had turned a deep red color from deoxygenation. From the amount that Jeff had seen coming from him, he’d be surprised if Barry’s lungs weren’t filling with blood, either. He’d learned in school that high fevers could destroy your body, but he had never imagined it would be so...gruesome.

The arm under his touch felt unnaturally soft, as if it had been turned into a bag of jello held together by a few layers of decomposing skin. The tissue around the wound had peeled back farther, black and grey around the edges as it exposed more of the bright red muscle underneath. He tightened his grip on the bottom of Barry’s arm, and immediately regretted it when everything  _ shifted _ —muscle raising up ever so lightly around the bone, veins and arteries folding and then breaking under the stress of the tough grip. There was blood on his fingertips too, and the absolutely horrendous  _ squelching  _ sound when he moved his hand alerted Jeff to the fact that his grip had literally punctured holes in Barry’s arm.

“You can’t function like this.” He sounded completely resigned. Jeff’s arms crossed, but so tightly that it looked like he was more intent on hugging himself than being commandeering. “I’m sorry,” he added, a lot more quietly. He had the same look on his face that he’d had when McJones had turned to him in the morning. In retrospect, McJones was probably bringing up that  _ Zombie AIDS  _ or whatever the hell it was that he called it. It was no wonder Jeff looked so terrified when he brought it up. He wouldn’t want to watch anyone die a haunting death like this, either.

“Why don’t you just get some sleep and we’ll...we’ll talk about this in the morning.” Jeff said somberly, helping Barry to his feet. He barely made it to one of the beds before collapsing into it, barely aware of his surroundings anymore.

Neither of them said anything, but they both knew he wasn’t going to get back up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao get wrecked


	3. pt. 3 -- living nightmare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> he watched him fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this prompt is kinda short for me but i felt like dragging it on more would ruin the effect so here She Be...ngl this is my favorite one so far  
> this was actually meant to be very different but i wrote the first part and then galaxy brained the rest of it

It had all happened so quickly. Too quickly, one might even say. One moment, they had been fine, mining their way down a dark path and chatting casually amongst themselves. The next, the ground was suddenly gravel, falling underfoot and pulling Austin and McJones down, down toward the ground. 

In his brother’s case, a fall that was a little too far.

Austin had, by some supernatural grace, managed to catch himself on a little bit of rock that stuck out from the jagged cave walls. The ridge itself was so small that he barely fit on it. The shock of landing so suddenly hurt, but at least he had landed on  _ something.  _ A landing which left him to watch in horror as McJones missed the little ledge, fingers grabbing at empty air accompanied with a horrified yell of his name—followed by brutal silence. No crash, no thud, no noise to signify that he ever even landed: he fell so far that Austin simply couldn’t hear his death. 

_ Austin! _

Despite that, his voice seemed to echo in the chasm for a little too long, haunting it. Austin didn’t dare process the scene for a few moments more. It had happened _so_ _quickly_ , leaving him feeling like he needed to rewind and repeat the event again to fully grasp what had just happened. Surreal, removed from reality, like his eyes were just playing a cruel joke on him. But McJones’s voice still echoed in his head, and so it had to be real. 

He knew his brother was dead, and it filled him with a horrible sense of sorrow, guilt. Was this what he’d put McJones through all of the hundreds of times he’d died before him? Austin had never outlasted his brother, and for a selfish moment he wished it was him, crumpled at the bottom of the dark pit, instead of McJones. They shouldn’t have been digging together, really, there was no logical explanation for that: they both knew that the whole purpose of strip-mining was to do it in a way that kept everyone else safe if one person ran into trouble. 

Why was McJones even there? 

“Is everything alright down there?!” He heard someone yell from back down the tunnel they’d been digging. He wasn’t really sure  _ who  _ it was, he couldn’t be bothered to distinguish the voice. 

“No,” he called back, although he was certain his voice was too quiet to carry. He needed to get down to the bottom of the pit before the monsters raided McJones’s corpse and took whatever they could find of value from him. Not only was it valuable, but no greedy-handed skeleton or zombie deserved anything of his brother’s. 

“Austin? Hello?” Right. Dean had been with him, and had split off on his own direction not too far back, a few meters to the right as their protocol called for. Thank god he hadn't still been with Austin, or he might have fallen to his death. The sudden absence of running footsteps as the stopped suddenly, followed by a hissed out  _ Shit!  _ drew Austin’s attention upwards. 

“McJones, he—he fell.” Austin said quietly. “I have to go down there and get him.”

“Austin, that’s crazy, what are you—“

“McJones fell, I’m going down there to get him,” Austin repeated, a little off-put by Dean’s hesitance. He was normally all for collecting the deceased’s belongings. 

“What do you mean,  _ he fell _ , Austin? Don’t go down there, that’s a stupid idea.”

“I mean he fell, what do you think I mean? I  _ need  _ to get down there, Dean!” Austin snapped. He couldn’t see Dean, blocked from his vision by an overhang of rock. A flare of anger surged through him, driven by frustration and the lack of understanding from the other. How could Dean be so apathetic towards recovering McJones? They were close, too! And yet, he sounded more concerned than upset by the sudden loss. Completely ignoring his words, Austin turned and began carefully digging his way down the edge of the pit. He had to be careful. He couldn’t suffer the same fate as him. 

“What the—fucking hell, Austin, relax!” Dean called down, still at the ridge. He sounded abnormally distressed, moreso than he normally would in any type of stressful situation, and that panic offered Austin a strange break of clarity. Why was he risking his life like this? McJones was—

An image of McJones falling off of a dark cliff flashed in front of his eyes. It was too dark for him to see much of what was going on in the vision, but he could make out another figure, an  _ observer,  _ watching. And then suddenly, he felt like he was drowning, blue filling his vision like panic filled his lungs and made it impossible to breathe. But as soon as it had happened, something had boosted Austin out of the torrent, and he found himself still standing on the precarious ledge. A combination of déjà vu and shock, he supposed, blaming the inaccuracies on the scrambled state of his mind. 

He was dead. Austin needed to get to his body. Right. 

He continued chipping away at the rocks with increased irritation, quickly driving towards the bottom of the pit. It was dark, so oppressively dark that he couldn’t see if there was even anything crumpled at the bottom. Not wanting to waste any precious time putting up a torch, Austin tore through the last few levels of stone before finding that he couldn’t break the ground anymore. The distinct noise of iron on obsidian echoed upwards, and he stopped digging. Hopefully, this was the same bottom level that McJones had fallen to. 

Austin dropped his pickaxe with an echoing  _ clang _ , digging through his supplies for a torch. Finally procuring one, he set it up on the cold ground next to him, looking across the small floor of obsidian he stood on. Although he sounded distant, Austin could tell that Dean was still yelling, and getting  _ louder _ —clearly making his way down the haphazard staircase. 

There was no other way in or out of the pit, after all. It was just...there, a sudden drop in the earth, a cruel trick of a synthetic mother nature designed to kill. But infinitely more concerningly, Austin was horrified to discover that there was no  _ body.  _ Nothing. No armor, no belongings, none of those strange little yellow-green orbs that appeared whenever something was killed. No McJones on the ground, in any of the corners, no trace of him whatsoever. No sign that he had been in the pit at all. 

His first assumption was that the monsters had already taken him. But that didn’t make sense: skeletons and zombies looted armor, and zombies picked up items like weapons and food, but he’d never heard of them carting off an entire  _ body  _ before. Frantically pulling out another torch, Austin held the flame out to illuminate the small area better. The tall rock faces cast long shadows that made visibility difficult, but it was very easy to see that he was very much  _ alone.  _

“Austin—” Dean started, only to be cut off for the millionth time by a very distressed Austin.

“Where is he? Where did he go?” He took a step towards Dean, gesturing angrily towards the ground. “People don’t just disappear like that!”

“Austin, he’s been dead for like, a fucking  _ week!  _ What the hell are you going on about? He’s not gonna be in here!” Dean’s hands grabbed his shoulders, as if trying to snap Austin out of a dream he didn’t know he’d entered. McJones was...dead? He had been for a while? But that couldn’t be right...he’d come down the mineshaft and tapped Austin on the shoulder, scaring the hell out of him just a few minutes ago. And Austin had seen him last night, as well, a faint figure in the rainy darkness trying to fish up a bow at the river that ran past their house.

And then, two days prior, he’d been looking for spiders near the forest, right? Truthfully Austin found it strange that he’d been by himself, but he trusted that McJones was some combination of arrogant enough to think he could handle any enemy, and smart enough to recognize danger if he’d gotten himself into it, so he didn’t comment.

And then, three days prior to that...three days prior to that…

Austin’s head hurt.

He could remember, vaguely, watching as a skeleton shot at just the right angle, knocking McJones off of a cliff. But, then, two more days prior to that, he’d lost his footing on a mountain of sand, and fallen to his death. The memories were hazy, almost fabricated in nature, only confusing Austin more as he tried to figure out which one was the real memory. It felt as if he wasn’t supposed to remember more than one of them at a time: people didn’t die multiple times like that, even with the strange mortality principles of their world. 

“We were mining, and he dug right into a ravine, and some water knocked him down. Don’t you remember?”

Yea. Austin remembered that one too. That one must have been the real one. But it didn’t make sense: he had been seeing McJones around in bits and pieces for the past week, despite him not being there anymore.

“I...I swear I’ve been seeing him around since then. Think I’ve seen him die four times now.” Austin admitted, still looking at the obsidian ground as if he still expected a body to suddenly appear there. Dean gave him a pitying look, hesitantly stepping towards the staircase winding upwards.

“Let’s just get out of here and we’ll figure something out. I don’t think the dark is helping you.” 

  
Austin nodded, traipsing back up slowly. It was hard for him to tear his eyes away from the bottom of the chasm, as if he was being pulled back into it. All the while, he struggled to process what the  _ hell  _ was happening in his head. Had Todd sunk so low as to start creating illusions and fabricating memories to drive them all insane, one by one? Either way, the realization that he’d been hallucinating his own brother’s death for a week, unable to tell the facts from fiction, trapped him inside his own mind. A living nightmare, you could call it. One where he just kept watching, and repeating, and watching, and  _ seeing,  _ but could never wake up. He didn’t know how long many times he’d have to watch McJones die, but Austin knew vaguely that the terror was far from over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i promise i’ll stop bullying austin soon, i’m sorry


	4. pt. 4 -- red stains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the red stains destroyed all that they touched.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaaAAA i got sick and fell behind...im gonna try to catch up either today or tomorrow but for now here's day 4!!  
> honestly i felt kind of rushed finishing this and id like tor revisit the concept eventually but...not right now lul

Dodger woke up to the sound of heavy rain and the smell of wet grass. It was still early, and the thick cloud cover made the sky darker than it would have been had the sun been out at this time. Their ever-expanding house was empty (actually, it looked bigger than it had when Dodger had gone to sleep last night, and she didn’t miss the bright poppies potted neatly by the door), but she could hear faint chatter from somewhere in a general leftward direction. She couldn’t distinguish words, but the hushed, serious tone told her that something important was happening. 

Not bothering to find her single piece of armor from wherever she’d put it last night, she grabbed a sword and a pick and headed outside. The rain fell in heavy sheets, and the glowing eyes of spiders dotted the hills around their home. Fortunately, a few well-placed torches kept the immediate vicinity at least a little bit safer. She made her way to the group, quietly slipping her way into their circle between Jeff and Ray and staring at the ground where everyone else seemed to direct their attention. 

A small, red shape, vaguely circle-esque with an uneven,  _ fluctuating  _ margin sat at the center. It couldn’t have been much wider in diameter than a soccer ball or a basketball, but its mere presence commanded the attention of seven adults. To her, it looked almost as if someone had dropped a splash of red paint on the ground. But if that were the case, shouldn’t the rain be washing it away?

“What are we looking at?” She broke the silence, announcing her presence. No one responded, and it was very clear that no one knew what this thing was, either. She was half-tempted to stick her foot into it, but the slight waver of the margins and the deep red color made the little stain look strangely dangerous, and she decided against it. Eventually, someone from the other side of the circle (she couldn’t be bothered to look away and see who it was) grabbed a stick off of the ground and poked the circle with one end.

The stick curled in on itself almost instantly, grotesquely morphing until the bottom of half was a small circle of curled, ashy-black matter. Dodger felt her eyes widen reflexively, taking a small step  _ away.  _ She was very glad she hadn’t stuck her foot in.

“So it’s spread out here?”

The familiarly slow, ever-relaxed cadence of Todd’s voice echoed over the group’s heads. He was a few feet to the left of the group, hovering just above the ground as he always did, an uncharacteristically sharp frown etched across his face.

“I’ve been trying to change some things around, but the world isn’t taking too kindly to my alterations,” he explained, pushing his way into the circle. “These little incongruities have been popping up all over the place. I had  _ hoped  _ you wouldn’t find them, it really is boring to watch people just fall into them and die. Don’t do that by the way. Or do. I don’t control you.”

Dodger consciously had to bite back an  _ ‘Are you sure about that?’. _

  
  
  


In the end, they put a little red fence around the red spot, and went among their days—mining for iron and diamonds, breeding copious amounts of chickens and cows, and planting plenty of seeds. It wasn’t until about a week later that any more serious developments concerning the mysterious red spot were made. 

“Guys, you might not want to step too far outside.” A few people had already gathered at the front door, and Dodger balanced on her tiptoes to see over their shoulders. Much of her vision was still blocked, but she could see a deep, dark red spreading in a large space in front of the house, covering all of the ground she could see. 

“Let me through, I can’t see,” she complained, trying to push her way to the front of the mass without pushing anyone outside and into the  _ danger zone,  _ as she quickly dubbed it. There was a small sliver of grass still remaining in front of the house, one she suspected she could walk along if she was very careful. From where she stood, she could see that the red spot has extended to the farm, upturning half of their crops, and—

“It killed the chickens!” She exclaimed sadly, pointing over to the pen. The ground was littered with bloody chicken parts and feathers, and the lone three or so survivors cowered together in a corner, exchanging frantic clucks at one another. “That’s so sad, they just got  _ poofed  _ out of existence!” Almost moving on autopilot, she toed over to the side of the door, making sure to lean against the wall as to not trip into the mysterious red disaster. 

“Dodger, I don’t think you should go out that way.” Austin, who’d opened the door in the first place, was quick to comment. She turned around, looking from him to the narrow stretch of green still flourishing. “It’s fine, we can just put up a new door on the other side.” She shrugged, making a bit of a face, but went back into the safety of their home nonetheless. There was a door at the back of the house already, but they rarely used it since it didn’t lead out near their farms or animals. She pushed it open, grateful to see that the land there was still unscathed.

She approached the chicken pen with caution, extra wary of the redness that had begun to spread out there. The three chickens looked at her with a cacophony of confused noises, and it was impossible not to pity them. She carefully removed one of the back pieces of fence, watching as the chickens gratefully left their dangerous pen. In the middle of the pen was where the carnage started, a concerning amount of chicken...mush….lying on the ground. She reached for one foot that stuck out of the pile at an odd angle, and pulled on it lightly, freeing the carcass.

The chicken itself was mangled beyond repair, the leg barely still attached to the poor thing’s body. If she hadn’t known what was in there before, Dodger doubted she would have recognized the creature in the first place. Even more disturbing than the state of the corpse she held at arm’s length, however was the chicken’s eyes--er, eye. It only had one remaining, but rather than the clouded-over looked she had grown to associate with death, its eyes were faintly glowing red: almost like the red stains had infected the chicken rather than just killing it.

The slightly glow was as hypnotizing as it was disturbing, and Dodger found herself staring at the chicken’s soulless eye until the edges of her own vision started to cloud with red. At that, some base instinct in her screamed to back the  _ hell  _ away, and she panicked, throwing the chicken somewhere over her shoulder and stumbling backwards until the ground under her made a strange, crackling noise.

For a moment, she thought she’d stepped on one of the chickens, infected or not. But no, the chicken had landed somewhere vaguely to her left, actually, it had hit a tree trunk and landed right at the bottom. Dodger then watched in horror as said tree began to  _ turn red _ , first around the base, but then slowly spreading up the boxy trunk and into the dense leaves. It looked like someone had erased a layer on a drawing, changing the entire color of the tree in a matter of five seconds. As the ground around the tree began to turn a slight shade of red as well, she backed up immediately.

The thing she’d stepped on was actually a small sheet of paper, the  _ nice  _ kind that Todd would make to leave them notes and not the flimsy, pounded sheets of sugar cane she was more used to. She picked it up, trying to brush off some of the dirt stain her shoe had left as she unfolded the note.

_ You should stay inside. _

_ -Wizard _

It wasn’t a suggestion, despite the wording, it had to be a command. If there was something in the world so strange that Todd couldn’t actually control it, then it was certainly a threat to the rest of them and their lack of strange, otherworldly abilities. Combined with the concerning revelation that the  _ redness  _ could transfer from object to object, and seemed more like an infection than a glitch in the matrix, she was more than willing to be back inside the house, inside walls that would keep her safe.

Or so she thought.

Inside the house was supposed to be the one place where they could be safe, she thought. But no, even home wasn’t safe from a world-bending anomaly. It seemed some zombies had been infected (how ironic, she would have laughed), and had spotted the house, slowly trudging towards it and leaving red footprints in their wake, once that rippled out across the plains. 

Even if everyone was inside, the room was quiet, each of them entirely unsure of what to say as they all quickly came to the same revelation that Dodger just had. None of them knew what to say, or if there even  _ was _ anything to say, as they didn’t know what the red stain would do to them. Kill them, possess them, definitely and painfully, but there was no  _ telling  _ what was really within the red tide rapidly approaching them. 

She’d never imagined she’d get to watch her own death, but she never really wished for it either. She found it was better to go quickly and painlessly before you could even realize what was happening to you. An instant death, falling or maybe being blown up, was infinitely better than drowning, or burning to death, or watching extra-infected zombies as they began to pound on the doors of your house.

Dodger swallowed her heartbeat, racing sporadically in her chest as she curled around herself a little tighter. She hugged her knees to her chest and stared up blankly, watching as the wood walls that once protected her ripped with color, and were slowly stained red. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i swear, i dont have anything against chickens


	5. pt 5. -- intruder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> no one would suspect him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was originally gonna be centered around someone else but then i binged brutalmoose instead of writing for 2 days   
> and then i forgot write him

Todd’s tower was always beautiful, in a slightly futuristic and not-compliant-with-the-rest-of-the-world kind of way. The polished, reflective walkways, the obsidian courtyard, the scattered lanterns emitting a soft, blueish glow: it was all very appealing to the eyes. 

Jeff would know; he’d been spending a lot of time there as of late. He hadn’t willingly sided with Todd,  _ per se, _ but he’d certainly grown sick of being the last person standing over and over again. It changed him in the way it would change any other slightly-less-than-sane human being. Perhaps it was desperation, or maybe it was a selfish desire, but he’d been trying to make a deal with Todd to get himself out of the mess they’d been so unwillingly put into. If everyone around him was just going to slow him down and put him through agony over and over again, it only made  _ sense _ that he would attempt to cut those emotional ties, with varying degrees of success. 

And at any rate, Todd had approached him first. He seemed to sense Jeff’s desperation, his apathy towards existence, and that wasn’t any fun for the mastermind. And so, he struck up a deal. Their agreement was simple: in exchange for his freedom, Jeff had to be a sort of spy. He had to do whatever Todd wanted, until Todd seemed him worthy of freedom, and ideally, being returned back to Earth. 

The wizard had taught him how to manipulate, how to use his personality to an advantage. People trusted him, maybe even pitied him, and he never shied away from whatever role was given to him. It made his life easier before, to go with the flow and become well-rounded in all aspects of taming their world. But it helped even more as he worked with Todd. People believed in him, therefore, they confided in him; most notably Luke and Austin. They told him their worries, their concerns, their fears for the future. No one would suspect a thing from him, the caretaker, the one who was always alone in the end, the one who had suffered the most in their endless quest. 

And he was asked to relay every bit of that personal information to Todd. Jeff still wasn’t privy to any ulterior motives that the wizard may have had, but he knew Todd liked to play his games. He was made vaguely aware that Todd was recording them somehow, broadcasting their journeys to some unknown, omniscient audience, and that his mind games made great enjoyment for both him and the audience. Dropping them all on a set of tiny islands in deep ocean, forcing their animals to turn on each other, unleashing day after day of endless, blinding thunderstorms, and making pigmen freak out  _ for no reason _ : Todd had an infinite number of sabotages up his sleeve. 

Being a wizard’s pawn had its ups and downs. Jeff knew that he would inevitably be out of this mess: that was why he stuck the deal. But Todd was a fickle character, who could act drastically when he didn’t see the results he wanted. He had no qualms about taking over Jeff’s conscience to get him to do tasks he could be reluctant to do: ruining the farm, accidentally killing all of the animals, or setting the house ablaze. And while Jeff hated the destructive intrusions, he stayed compliant if only for his own safety. After all, Todd could kill him, or revoke the deal entirely, if Jeff decided he didn’t want to cooperate. 

“You don’t normally grab me during the day. Won’t they notice?” Jeff asked. He’d appeared in Todd’s shelter one sunny morning, something uncommon for Todd to allow. He normally would teleport Jeff away in the middle of the night, so that no one would notice his absence. 

“If I can get you here in an instant, I can control time,” Todd reasoned. A fair response. 

“Anyways, I’ve brought you here because I have some news I believe you’ll find...well, interesting.” He seemed almost excited, a strange  _ bubbly  _ quality to his words that felt slightly out of character. “You see, I found someone in a predicament not entirely unlike yours. I managed to bring him here, and so you’ll be comrades of sorts. I’ve decided, this will be your final trial: if you can complete one last task for me, I’ll take you from this world and bring you wherever you’d like.”

Todd had finished both monologing and walking— _ gliding  _ up the stairs to the main room of the tower, Jeff trailing behind. The smooth floors seemed to shine a little extra in the sunlight, as if Todd had prepared a whole atmosphere for his dramatic reveal. It wouldn’t be a shock. The prospect of finally earning back his freedom made Jeff’s heart skip a beat. He’d done awful, regrettable things for this reason, but it was all going to be worth it soon. He could go back to Earth, and live a life that wasn’t haunted by dragons and zombies and horrible images of your best friend exploding on your shoes. 

A single figure, one that felt vaguely familiar, sat at the base of Todd’s...throne? That was what Jeff had always called the strange formation in the center of the tower. With a snap of his fingers, the human slowly raised to their feet, motions smoothing out from unnatural to smooth as if they were remembering how to function again. 

They raised their head ever so slightly, and Jeff instantly knew who it was: Ian. But it also wasn’t him—his face appeared sunken, gaunt, and his eyes, dear lord, his eyes. There was nothing to them—just a black smear of nothingness. He wondered if Ian has come here out of the same desperation that had driven Jeff into his agreements as well. 

“Hey. Long time no see. How’d you get here?” Jeff tried, taking a couple steps closer to him. Ian remained wordless, soulless eyes blinking at Jeff as if trying to communicate. 

“Same way as you,” he finally said, although Jeff was pretty sure he didn’t show up to this universe looking like a zombie. Suddenly, Ian phased out of Jeff’s vision for a moment, only to reappear with a grimace immediately after. 

“You’ll have to excuse some things. I think the  _ void _ did a deal of damage to him, he’s still recollecting his functions,” Todd chided, casting a glance down at both of them. After a long pause, he sighed melodramatically. 

“Ian?”

_ “Yes?” _

It was the same voice, too, just a bit more tired and scratchy. Jeff didn’t know what the void was, and figured that now wasn’t the time to ask, but he could certainly understand what Todd meant about it being harmful. 

“Just checking, just checking. Are you ready for your final assignment?”

He was met with absolute silence. 

Todd didn’t seem deterred, however, rising a few more inches off of the ground for good measure before he began to speak again. 

“It’s simple, really. Kill every member of your party, and you’re both free to go.”

Jeff’s blood ran cold. No. There was no way in any realm of existence that he could kill any of his friends. Despite being a little more than out of it, Ian seemed to share the same feeling: Jeff watched as his eyes widened. 

“You want me to kill people I just met?” He asked, sounding incredulous. “That’s fucking absurd.”

“You don’t have to lay a finger on them. Leave that to Jeff,” Todd smiled, moving closer to Jeff until he was only a few centimeters away from him. “Just keep them suitably distracted. It’s much easier than it sounds.”

“I’m not killing them, Todd,” Jeff interjected, taking a step back from the wizard. He frowned, but didn’t approach. 

“We made a deal. It’s up to you whether or not you want to fulfill it. Just think: tomorrow, you could be back on Earth and living as you please. It’s all your choice. And you know what happens when I don’t like your  _ choices _ .”

  
  
  


It had been easier than he thought, to begin killing them. Especially with the help from Ian and the promise of not just his freedom, but the others, hanging over his head. Jeff knew they would come back, anyways, and he tried to remind himself of that every time it came time for him to commit another act. Ian was good at distracting them: answering questions while Jeff sunk an arrow between Dean’s shoulders, blaming it on a skeleton. Amusing Austin with his weird disappearance ability in the mines and keeping his back to Jeff so that he could push Barry ever so slightly and have him plummet to the lava-filled ravine below. _ “He fell! Oh my god, he fell!” _ Jeff had yelled, and the horror that he projected as he kneeled at the edge of the cliff felt entirely too false. 

Next was Ray, and that was harder. Especially with two sudden, coincidentally  _ accidental  _ deaths with no one watching, the group had become more vigilant. Ray wasn’t stupid—okay, he could be at times, but he was one of the members of the group who conceivably had a brain somewhere in his skull. That kill has been a matter of opportunity: he’d asked Ray to help with the farm one night when a creeper came up behind him. Perhaps Jeff had made some face, or looked a little guilty, as Ray looked just about ready to say something when suddenly, he couldn’t speak at all. 

Then, there were three more: Lucah, Luke, and  _ Austin.  _ With every passing death, Lucah had grown more protective of the rest, barely letting them out of her sight. He wondered if she was on to him, if she knew he was simply Todd’s pawn and seeking his own selfish fate. He should have killed her first. She looked at him with pity when he approached her in the nether fortress, hiding after the party was segmented by an army of pigs, and she was wordless as he turned his blade on her. 

“Yo Hammy, Austin, do you have a minute?” Luke had approached them so casually, but there was a hint of discomfort in his voice. They’d been quickly caring for the animals before sleeping—Ian had already passed out after another day spent running through the nether—and Jeff hadn’t intended to do anything. He couldn’t bring himself to kill Austin, not yet. The thought of that, of killing his best friend for his own gain was simply too daunting. It didn’t matter if he was simply biding time until the deed was upon him, Austin was still Austin. 

“I...I don’t trust Ian.” Luke’s head was angled down, and he spoke quietly. “Ever since he’s showed up, people have been dying in super weird ways. I dunno, I just...feel like he’s an intruder sent my Todd to kill us all.”

“I was thinking the same, too. It just hasn’t been the same here,” Austin admitted. “It’s been more awful than usual, actually,” he added with a bit of a laugh. Jeff laughed along politely, but internally his mind had come to a screeching halt. He had two options: either agree or disagree with them. If he tried to convince them that Ian was innocent and they were paranoid, they might suspect  _ him,  _ but they might also drop the train of thought altogether. Meanwhile, if he could deflect the blame from himself at the risk of his only real ally…

He realized then, the role Ian played. The reason Todd had brought him here: it was to make Jeff’s job harder. His friends still trusted him so much after he had secretly done so much to him so unworthy of that honor. Ian was an easy scapegoat: he felt like an outsider, his past and his existence were simply so different that he became the excuse for the incidents occurring. Todd really wanted to put Jeff through hell a final time before setting him free, more than Jeff had initially assumed. 

“Sometimes we just have bad runs, I guess,” Jeff had offered what he hoped was a somewhat neutral statement. “We’re probably all just a little paranoid. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.” Both Austin and Luke had seemed satisfied with that answer, and so they went to bed. 

The next morning, Austin announced that he wanted to look for a village, and in true Austin style he wanted to go alone. He had jokingly asked Luke to bless him with his words, and Jeff had watched patiently as Austin faded into the horizon before turning to Luke. 

Maybe it was the shock, but Luke couldn’t outrun him. 

When Austin returned three days later, he had immediately thrown himself at Jeff. Confused, he’d accepted the hug lightly, before pushing Austin away and asking why he was so concerned. 

“I ran into Todd, and told me he sent an intruder who’s trying to kill us all. God, Jeff, I thought I left you and...Luke...for dead.” Austin had seen the additional grave, there was no way he hadn’t. Jeff had accented it nicely with flowers, a bit of an apology for the brutal murder of one of his closest friends. And he must have thought it had been made for Jeff, but the truth couldn’t be any more different. He paled, staring at Austin as he realized what had to happen next. Austin seemed a little less tense now that he was back in the house, taking off his armor and throwing himself onto one of the beds dramatically. But he was the only one left. The last remaining clause in all of the terms of Todd’s sadistic deal. 

“—sure am tired though, all that—“ his words fazed in and out of Jeff’s head as if they weren’t on the same realm of existence anymore. He could feel himself shaking, the familiar cold touch of Todd’s presence down the back of his spine as his trembling hand reached for the sword at his side. Austin had made it, days ago, and presented it to Jeff in a goofy kind of knighting ceremony. 

“Jeff?” Austin stood up, clearly noting the look on Jeff’s face. “You’re staring at me funny, what’s up?” Jeff shook his head, as if trying to dispel Todd from his head. Suddenly, everything he’d done in the past up until this point was null and void: he couldn’t do it. He could never kill Austin. Something about that realization made him want to drop to his knees and beg for forgiveness, to confess all of his sins like a lowly peasant at church. But there was no god, no room for salvation as Todd’s voice echoed within his head. 

_ We made a deal. Fulfill your end. _

He moved of his own accord, eyes downcast, stopping a few feet in front of Austin. Were his eyes watering now? He blinked frantically. 

“I’m sorry,” he finally said, quietly, and Austin tilted his head to the side in confusion. 

“Sorry..?” Austin repeated, taking a step towards Jeff. At that moment, Jeff’s head snapped up, and he watched in screenshots of time as a realization of horror dawns across his friend’s face. 

Austin stared at him in shock. Jeff’s eyes weren’t gold. Only Todd’s were. 

“Jeff, what are you doing? Snap out of it?” Austin waved a hand in front of his face. Jeff was frozen in place, every inch of his being suddenly diverted into trying to expel Todd’s will from his system. Screw freedom, screw everything he had ever asked for: if eternity was guilt free, then he preferred it to freedom. 

“Austin, I...it’s me. I did it. I just—I can't take it, I need to get out of here.” He didn’t want to speak those words, and yet they fell so easily from his lips. He had taken three steps forward, now walking, backing Austin into a corner. His hands were at his shoulders, eyes wide. Jeff’s sword was raised now, pointing at Austin’s chest. He was breathing heavily, frantically searching for an escape, oblivious to the war being waged in Jeff’s head. 

_ I don’t want to, Todd.  _

_ I’m getting bored.  _

_ I take it back. I don’t want to do this.  _

_ A deal is a deal. _

Austin had managed, somehow, to tackle Jeff to the ground, the diamond sword clattering across the room. The shock of the moment allowed Todd to fully permeate Jeff’s conscience, and he felt his limbs go numb and heavy as he dove for the blue weapon, grabbing it just seconds before Austin could. The next few moments passed like flipped pages in a photo album: and then, he was on his knees over Austin, the sword trembling and raised above his head. 

Austin was speechless, and probably crying. Jeff couldn’t see much of anything between the mess in his own eyes. He tried to fight back against Todd, against that damned  _ intruder,  _ but he was no match for an otherworldly being. 

“I’m sorry, Austin,” he muttered for the final time. It was barely audible, but Austin must have heard it, as he stopped struggling suddenly. 

“I forgive you.” Austin muttered That wasn’t what Jeff wanted to hear. It wasn’t what he  _ deserved.  _

He closed his eyes, looking up at the ceiling so that he wouldn’t have to watch the sword slice through Austin’s chest. 


	6. pt 6. -- fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> she was queen of the flames.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i freakin love lucah and im so sorry that this is how i wrote her the first time i got to do so

Fire had always been Lucah’s friend. She was a personification of the flames, so to speak: she could command an entire room with her presence and could be a dangerous weapon or a warm, supportive light depending on the situation. She thrived the most when she could be both: the healer and the fighter. It didn’t help that she had fiery hair, a crown of vibrant orange that stayed with her wherever she went. It identified her, it made her into who she was.

She’d found fire fascinating, too. It was inspiringly versatile: it could save a life, burning through enemies in a flash, but it could take them too, surrounding allies with desperation and futility just as quickly as lava flooded the small area where they hid.

In the Nether, Lucah was queen. She knew the others, her subjects and advisors, looked up to her for guidance. She was wise, caring, everything that a good queen needed to be in order to succeed. Unfortunately, her kingdom was a cruel one, full of war and strife. The children cried constantly, unhappy with the searing temperatures of their homes. The peasants were tired of their poor living conditions, charging at them while screaming curses. The criminals set fire for fun, shooting flames at anyone who was unlucky enough to be in their path and burning down buildings without remorse. However, the revolutionaries were by far the worst. Sure, they  _ acted _ complacent, but the moment a single one was upset even remotely, they formed a battalion. 

The cruel kingdom forced her to watch as her beloved subjects fell to its whims, one after the other. It had been painful to watch to watch them go, and she knew she would never forget any of them: the startled “No!” as Luke realized a second too late that a crying child’s blow would send him off of a ledge; the sheer regret in Ray’s eyes as he realized that even with the peasants gone, their strange curses would take vengeance and his life. 

And then the revolutionaries attacked. She couldn’t even remember who had initially hit one, a freak accident fueled by the high tension after losing two group members. But she could remember watching as they poured in from every direction, having to shout to be heard and desperately try to communicate over the angry grunts as they split the remaining group in half. She’d barely managed to grab Dodger and Dean’s hands in her own before sprinting in the opposite direction. A few more moments and they simply would have been carried away to their deaths by the waves of angry souls. But they ran, and ran and ran, trying to find the hideaways Jeff had built into one of the dead-end corridors. Jeff—he was certainly dead now too, with Austin and McJones. No matter how competent or brave any of them acted, there was no way that they could have fended off that sheer  _ volume _ of attackers. 

They sat down, backs to the dead end of that little corridor, staring ahead blankly. What could they say to help one another? They’d just witnessed five deaths in what couldn't have been much longer than an hour or two. 

“These better be some damn special plants,” Dodger finally broke the silence, earning a couple disheartened chuckles. She was right, though: all of this effort for a handful of fungus felt pretty ridiculous. They already had plenty of soul sand, so they could plant it when they got back. All they needed to find was one nether wart. One singular stalk, and they could get the hell out of here. 

“We’ve circled the entire fortress twice now,” Lucah noted. “I don’t know what else we can do but look for another fortress.”

“We can just dig,” Dodger suggested, slapping the netherrack wall with the back of her hand. Immediately, Dean grimaced, shaking his head no. He’d been unusually quiet since they’d sat down, seemingly ruminating over something on his own. 

“That is a  _ horrible  _ idea,” he was quick to respond. 

“There are lava pools in the netherrack, aren’t there?” Lucah asked, trying to get his point out in case Dodger had missed it. She only knew herself because someone had brought it up earlier when she’s suggested digging to look for a fortress in the first place. 

“Then we’ll dig slowly,” Dodger rationalized, beginning to stand up. “We can’t just  _ sit.  _ They...they died for this! All of them! We can’t just sit around and be miserable.” Dodger was already walking towards the walls, pickaxe raised threateningly. Lucah knew the intention behind her stance— _ even if you won’t, I will.  _ Dean sighed quite dramatically, getting to his feet and approaching Dodger. He looked wary—Lucah knew he had died like this before. He turned to Lucah expectantly, but she shook her head no.

“I’ll stay here and set up this base. We’re running out of room in our bags, and we need somewhere to come back to if we’re here for much longer.”

After all, good queen knows her place. Lucah knew that as much as she loved them, loved her subjects, she had to stay behind so that they would have a loving nation to return to. After all, a war-torn people need a strong leader to keep them together. And so, she sent them off tearfully, wiping the ash from under her eyes as she watched them begin to dig in slow, careful strokes down the corridor of netherrack.

While they were out gathering resources for their kingdom, Lucah set to work on making a castle that her subjects would be proud to return to. While they couldn’t sleep in the Nether, she made the room as comfortable as she could, placing chests and organizing their raw materials, separating them from the precious treasures they’d found in chests along the way. It was critical that her nation was organized, that she knew where everything was kept under her watchful eyes.

It wasn’t until a few hours, or what felt like a few hours, passed before Lucah remembered her remaining subjects—Dodger and Dean. They still hadn’t returned. A queen couldn’t have a kingdom without her subjects, after all, and so she willed herself to search for them. The tunnel they had dug from the back of her throne room was suffocatingly hot, but Lucah persevered for their sake. She had to find them, and return them to safety. Fortunately, they’d only ever dug in one direction, so it wasn’t difficult to find them, just tiresome. They didn’t seem all that excited to see her, but they didn’t refuse her ordering them to come back. She took them back through the claustrophobic tunnel, eventually setting them up in the room she had crafted so lovingly.

They weren’t really all that energetic, probably from exhaustion, and so Lucah decided to let them rest while she set off though the castle on her own. The citizens were still rioting, the revolutionaries running at her in waves that she had to skillfully cut down, the adults charging at her with curses and while children’s cries rang out in the background. She even had a terrifying run-in with the criminals, where they snuck up hideout they’d set up in a little alcove of her beautiful castle and attacked her suddenly. But the queen of the fire wouldn’t fall to such a cheap trick. All she had to do was stay calm and cut them down, destroying their home and taking their belongings as a reward for her hard work.

It was saddening, truly, to watch such a beautiful kingdom of flame be reduced to nothing but a heap of soot. After leaving the criminal hideout, she fortified some of the castle walls with a little extra stone before she made her way back to where Dean and Dodger waited for her. Yet as she approached, it was clear that tragedy had struck in her absence. She smelled it before she saw it: the horrid, putrid stench of burning flesh, the clouds of smoke that her sanctum spit out.

“How could you let this happen?” 

Sometime during her absence, the throne room must have been ransacked by the blazing criminals. Flames had begun to overtake it, dousing the square room in an orange glow. The chests had burned long ago, leaving piles of melted metals and charred meat on the floor. “I thought you two would be able to keep the castle safe,” she scolded the two, although they remained wordless. Their heads stared up at her, eyes glazed over. She sighed, picking up Dodger’s. There was still some dried blood, clumps of ash, and charred skin around the base of her neck. Lucah brushed it off lovingly, staring into Dodger’s hollow face. She wished she would respond, say anything to her, give her any explanation as to what had happened to her beautiful kingdom as the flames slowly rose.

The flames reflected off of Dodger’s blank eyes and the blood that dripped from her parted lips. The orange glow complimented her well, Lucah thought wistfully. She was always passionate and hot tempered, perfect for an inhabitant of a fiery kingdom. She would have made such a beautiful warrior, blending in perfectly to her home terrain. Lucah set Dodger’s head back down carefully on the little brick ledge, and stepped back into the hall outside of the throne room. The flames closed in on her from either side, and she could still hear the footsteps of the revolutionaries above her. She knew her short reign was coming to an end, but she was destined to die a queen. She stepped back into the throne room, closing the charred wooden door behind her, and sat down on her throne. The brick wasn’t comfortable to sit on, and it was uncomfortably hot against the back of her head, but she closed her eyes wordlessly as she felt the first sparks touching her legs.

As the flames slowly crept up her body, she gritted her teeth. Like being burned at the stake, she thought, a fitting death for a queen that betrayed her country and led her people to their deaths. The pain was unbearable, and it made her want nothing more than to run away and restart her life as a runaway in another kingdom. But this was the death that she deserved, remaining alongside her two most trusted companions as they were all made victim to the neverending fires.

All her life, Lucah had been likened to flames. She had grown to rule over them, commanding everything in their endless realm. It was only fitting that they would take her down, too.


	7. pt. 7 -- leather-bound wrists

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> he hated seeing austin in such danger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! this is based off of my au, deceiving tomorrows! so if you haven't read that this might not make a lot of sense!  
> if you're too lazy to read or its not clear, heres a lil synopsis: mcjones makes a living researching bad magic stuff. he doesn't want austin to know bc he thinks austin is a little too clumsy to bear that kinda knowledge. but then he gets #snatched and well....we're here now.

Every day as a highly-confidential captive began and ended relatively the same. The middle of the day could fluctuate, depending on how his captors were feeling and what orders had been passed down, but it usually consisted of some mix of sulking to himself, _discussion_ , eating one measly meal, and then _more_ _sulking_ before he inevitably passed out. Maybe a bit of time to regret every choice he’d ever made that brought him to this terrible place, and reevaluate his fragile pride as well, if he was lucky.

_ Discussion _ , that was what the Savior’s guards called it. Both they and McJones knew that the term was just a formality. They weren’t afraid to use any and every trick in the book, no matter how filthy it be, to try to pry answers from him. Psychological torture, physical violence, magic—they’d even threatened Austin once or twice, too. That was when it was really hard not to crack. 

He straightened his posture upon hearing the door behind him open, signaling the arrival of whoever was going to be ‘discussing’ with him that day. Every day, when he was brought into the small, windowless room, the guards did one thing without fail: tie his wrists down to the discussion chair. Tight leather bands, pressing down enough that he couldn’t even rotate his wrists, let alone have any hope of breaking out of them. Then, they’d leave him alone for a few minutes, as if hoping the still atmosphere of the room would one day break him down. 

Today it was a woman whose voice he faintly recognized. He was pretty sure she’d been there when he was taken from his study, but the memories from that day had blurred too much for him to be entirely certain. Like all of the Savior’s followers, she wore a long, hooded white cloak with a small cross-shaped clasp over the chest. Her hood was pulled up entirely, covering her eyes, but a single strand of flaming orange fell from under it. The woman didn’t seem to mind (normally the followers were very strict about concealing their identities), setting her hands down on the table across from McJones with a soft noise. There was a ring on one of her fingers: a simple, slightly tarnished golden band, but it stood out nonetheless amongst the monotonous blacks and whites he was so used to.

“Good morning,” she began. Instantly, he was put off by the sheer volume of fake sweetness that laced through her words. She tapped her fingers on the table lightly, the Savior’s emblem branded onto the back of her right hand. A thin cross framed by a diamond shape, the symbol had haunted his life for years. He tried once again to turn his own hands, hoping that this would be the  _ fateful _ day where buckles failed and he would be able to rip himself straight from the chair. The guards had put some sort of limiter on his magic, but it was lifted whenever his hands were tied down. Perhaps keeping the curse up expended too much energy from the guards. At any rate, if he ever was able to free his hands in this room, he’d be free.

“Are you going to give us answers today?” The woman asked. She still spoke sweetly, but no longer disguised the malice behind her tone. McJones blinked at her, wordless. Truthfully, he couldn’t see her face at all, since his glasses were confiscated the moment he was dragged into captivity. But he could see colors, make out the vague shape of her stern jaw and narrowed eyes.

“Answers?”

He was too old to stall by playing dumb, but it was a time-tested tactic nonetheless. The woman sighed, leaning forwards a little on her hands. The effect of her sharp glare was  _ mostly _ lost when he couldn’t entirely receive it, but ill-intent seemed to radiate off of her in waves nonetheless.

“Don’t be  _ ridiculous _ . You know that as soon as you give us what we want, you’ll be free to go.”

_ Yea, right, _ he wanted to scoff. He was pretty sure that was just something the guards had begun to say in hopes that it would make him more willing to speak. It was the price to pay for willing too much. But if anyone had to pay that price, McJones was glad it was him: he thought himself resilient enough to outlast any cruel tricks thrown his way. More so than his brother, than anyone he’d ever worked with—especially him. He’d been gone, set free with a curse almost immediately, and McJones couldn’t help but wonder what precious information was selfishly divulged for that freedom.

The woman stepped back suddenly, waving her hand in front of her. A smear of dark appeared in the sky, rippling like dark water for a moment as it settled in the air. She waved her hand over the screen, and an image began to show. They loved to show him what his brother was up to, especially if he was in any danger. It was perhaps the most powerful weapon, the thing that brought him the closest to speaking. His whole life had been dedicated to two things: dangerous research, and keeping Austin  _ as far away _ from that dangerous research as he could.

But Austin being Austin seemed especially good at getting himself into especially perilous situations. Just last week (he assumed it was last week, at least—counting the days in here was tricky), he’d seen Austin running through a forest, carrying an arrow-covered  _ someone _ . Their face was half-concealed in shadow, giving them an appearance somewhere on the threshold of death. The way that the not- _ quite _ -cautious Austin threw constant glances over either shoulder was enough to make McJones’s heart race.

The scene being shown to him was dark at first. There were bits of dark greens, greys and browns, but apart from that he struggled to make out any details until a flash of blinding, lime green illuminated the frame. Austin was front and center, of course, but he wasn’t alone: no, there were four other people with him, three familiar and one unknown. They all seemed to be facing off against some great forest spirit, all dark claws of gnarled bark and blank, soulless white eyes. He recognized the mannerisms immediately, but couldn’t dare to say what the creature was, or why it acted to maliciously, taking swings at every person in sight. Normally, the forest spirits were pacifists.

It seemed that the group, despite looking well-equipped, had bitten off more than they could chew. In a matter of minutes, the five-man group had been reduced to just two: Austin,  _ of course,  _ and a tall, skinny young man who had a striking resemblance to the former Prince of Asagao. McJones had been informed that he was dead. Perhaps that wasn’t true. It wasn’t much longer until the stranger backed away, either, leaving only Austin against a beast five times his size.

He looked down from the screen ever so slightly, trying to avert his gaze. It didn’t work, it never worked: there must have been some kind of magic at play, one that would force his gaze to turn back up at the screen he so desperately wanted to ignore. He hated it, hated everything about this situation: being powerless to watch his own brother risk his life, being away from his work that he  _ knew  _ was critical, being tied down like a  _ war criminal.  _ As if someone slowed down time, spirit drew up its arm lethargically, as if pitying someone—whether that someone was Austin or McJones, he couldn’t say for sure.

Then, the passage of time resumed normally, and the beast’s arm swung down,  _ straight into Austin. _

McJones grimaced, but still didn’t speak. There was a dull ache forming along his side, as if he could feel the pain from Austin’s injuries. He’d be lucky if all of his ribs were still intact as a blow like that. But of course, his naive, idiot,  _ kid brother  _ stood back up. He was shaking, barely able to draw back his arrows or hold a gaze to the forest spirit towering over him. McJones grabbed the arms of the chair, praying that the woman standing behind the screen wouldn’t taunt him. His heart was in his throat. He’d seen a lot doing his research, but he knew that he’d never be the same if he watched his brother die and did nothing about it.

_ “—out, Austin!”  _ A voice crackled through the transmission, just barely audible. It was weak, as if the person speaking was fighting for air, and Austin immediately turned to face the source of the voice.

How stupid could he be? That was the number one rule of, say,  _ anything dangerous? Don’t turn your back on what’s trying to kill you?  _

The beast took a few steps towards Austin. He wasn’t short, by any means, he was kind of  _ obnoxiously tall _ , but the creature dwarfed him. Completely oblivious Austin, barely turned around in time to see the giant branch coming down, straight for his head.

The transmission crackled, and then fell black.

“Oops.” The woman, who McJones had almost forgotten about, laughed lightly. Although she shrugged, he knew that it was a ploy to keep him wondering and anxious about what was happening on the other side, the side that he couldn’t see anymore. “It looks like Austin’s in some pretty serious trouble,” she mused, pacing back and forth. “It’s a shame that no one is there to help him out or keep him safe.” She sighed, and McJones assumed there was some kind of fake pout on her face.

He swallowed heavily, trying not to acknowledge how fast his heart was still racing. He would always tell himself that Austin was fine, but...this time, he might actually not be.

“What...what’s your offer?” His voice cracked, disgustingly. It made him sound weak, weaker than he already was, completely dissipating the tough facade he tried to project in a matter of moments.

The woman smiled, approaching him with a bouncy gait.

“I’m glad you asked.” She held up a small stone, glowing strings emerging from it like spider’s legs. “This controls that creature your brother is battling against. If you tell us what we want—” she waved the stone a little in the air, and the champagne-colored fizzed out of existence for a moment. “We’ll let up on him.”

McJones stared at the stone, at his hands, at the wall, at literally anything he could to keep himself from thinking about the dilemma he was faced with. He didn’t even know that Austin was in grave danger—that video could all be just a fake to get him to cooperate. But at the same time, the magic stone was real—he could sense the faint humming off of it, disturbing the air around it with powerful frequencies that couldn’t be seen with human eyes.

A whole life’s worth of work was on the line. Work that, in the wrong hands, could prove deadly to more than just his brother. Or could be the end of his brother anyways. But his brother’s life, the only thing that (maybe) mattered more than his work, was equally endangered. He knew things that no human needed to know: ways to destroy the world, to make the dead rise like oceans and the forests burn like matchsticks. He feared that if any one bit oh his knowledge was given to the Savior, the world as he knew it would simply cease to exist.

But if he and Austin got out of their respective disasters, they could flee. They could just...leave the country. Change their names. Set up a little farm in the mountains and bide their time until the brewing catastrophe boiled over, and then evaporated.

That would be selfish, wouldn’t it? He had dedicated his life, his entire life of work, to researching things that were dangerous in order to keep them out of his wrong hands. It would be  _ incredibly selfish,  _ not to mention all the people who studied before him and every  _ single person  _ who had helped him along in any way, shape or form.

“Why don’t I give you a moment to think. Such an _emotional_ decision can’t be easy.” He could tell from the woman’s voice that she was mocking him, but McJones nodded nonetheless. He couldn’t believe he was seriously considering this type of self-betrayal. She walked off behind him, and moment later, the door closed quietly. Alone with his thoughts, McJones fell back into the old habit of trying to pull his hands free. As per usual, they didn’t budge.

He looked down at his leather-bound wrists in defeat once more. If only there was an easier way out...


End file.
